2017 has been a disappointing year for me. I still don’t have a flying car or a robot to do all my grunt work. My cancer came back. My Dad passed on. I’m older, creakier and crankier than I ever thought I’d be. It would be great if 2018 would bring big improvements, but I’m not holding my breath.

What really needs to change is my attitude. Luckily, I’m completely able to do just that, IF I’m willing to make the effort. The problem is inertia. Once something comes to a complete stop, it’s very hard to get it going again. That’s why it’s so important to make positive steps before you become completely disillusioned by life.

The easiest fix is to start seeing the good things as well as the bad. Sure, my cancer came back, but so did the cat. That monstrous little beast took off for over a week leaving me and my husband distraught. And this was just days after my Father’s memorial service! I was feeling pretty low. Then one evening she just walked into the living room, said “Meow” and headed past us into the bedroom with her typical attitude of vague distain. It was a miracle!

And though the chemo wasn’t any fun, it did seem to do the trick and I am preliminarily cancer-free. (I talk to the oncologist again in a couple of weeks.) I’m mightily blessed to have good insurance and a loving husband to help me through, not to mention all the friends and family who blessed me with their prayers and encouragement.

Yes, I did spend many a day on the couch, achy, exhausted and bored. But I did so in a clean, quiet, comfortable home with a kitchen full of food and a cozy bed in the next room. I managed to keep my business afloat and my bills paid, though my social life (such as it is) did suffer. I think that has a lot to do with my feelings of disappointment.

As much of a loner as I am, I still understand that humans are social animals. We need connections and without them, we go off the track, go postal, start stockpiling ammo and working up a manifesto. One of the most psychologically damaging things you can do to someone is to keep him in solitude. It doesn’t take very long before he goes psychotic.

So it’s time for me to get back into it – start choir again, go to lunch with colleagues, talk to people on the phone. It’s going to take effort because I’ve gotten used to coming home after work and going straight to bed. On my days off I find myself lying around in front of the TV which is practically guaranteed to make you depressed.

In my defense, I haven’t had the strength to do a lot of things I need to do, But hey, it’s a new year and, I hope, a new me.

Every year I get more and more disgusted by the commercial mess we make of Christmas in this country. The decorations that come out before Thanksgiving and compete for flashiness. The endless loop of cheery songs on the radio. It’s Santa and Frosty and sleigh rides and snow, but nary a hymn among them. The real reason for the season has been forgotten in favor of shopping!

I’m frankly sick of Black Friday. There’s nothing in this world that I’m willing to wait all day in line to buy. (Unless our liberal progressives make good on their promise to bring wonderful Socialism to our country. Then I guess I’ll be waiting that long for a loaf of bread.)

I’m also sick of Cyber Monday and all the alerts being posted to my phone and email about sales! Sales! SALES! So this year I went completely off and decided that I wasn’t going to buy ANY presents, not even the token boxes of chocolate that have been my default gift for the past decade. I vowed that no one over the age of 10 was getting anything from me!

Of course I had to back off on that because I have a starving nephew who’s trying to be self-supporting and a son who all of the sudden has double the amount of kids to feed and clothe. They could really use a little “green” this season. And then there’s my lovely stepmother. I certainly want to remember her, especially with her grieving the death of my father.

And my husband did get me some really nice jewelry. I guess I’ll take him out to a fancy restaurant so I have some place to wear it. And I want to give my clients something. Probably chocolate or candy canes. Then there’s the neighbor who keeps an eye on our house for us. I could make a batch of cookies or a pie.

But wait! Where went my resolve not to buy into all the gift-giving frenzy!? (Probably where most of my resolve goes. Right out the window.) It IS nice to have a holiday where people remember the ones they love by giving them gifts. And I guess that where there’s a giver, there’s a receiver. I just wish we could all remember the real gift we’re celebrating.

That’s the gift of Jesus. Remember? He’s the Christ in Christmas. And maybe the early Christians did co-opt a pagan sun ritual to get the point across, but the point is valid all the same. We’re celebrating the day that Light came into the world. Not just the days getting longer, but the Light of the World who gave us hope we could overcome all the evil inherent in this life.

So before you rack up more charges on that credit card, remember who was born in a lowly stable and died an ignoble death to bring us strength and joy. And put some Christ in your Christmas!

Once the sexual harassment stories started trending, I figure some Hollywood producer ran into his studio head’s office all excited. “Check it out, boss! We’ll call it “Salem 2050”. Only this time it’s men who’re being burned at the stake. It’s the Handmaiden’s Tale but with guys!” I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that idea, or something like it, is in pre-production as we speak.

This issue is one of those “good news, bad news” things. The good news is that the “secret” is out and women everywhere are standing up to the idea of a casting couch and its corporate equivalent. The bad news is that men everywhere are losing their positions without any real proof of wrong-doing.

To get perspective, I look back at the classic division of labor that built our civilization. The men go out to hunt/conquer. The women stay home and gather/farm. It really started as a way to get the violent and unpredictable men out of the camp so the women could domesticate plants, animals and their children. But even then, the oldest profession was in operation.

There were always those women who went off with the army. Sure, some of them were simply cooks and laundresses, but a lot of them were the groupies of their day, trading their charms for the spoils of war. In fact the Bible’s definition of a prostitute is an unmarried (and unengaged) woman, whether she was “in the life” or not. If you were of a certain age and didn’t have the socially approved “widow” to add to your name, you were a slut, plain and simple.

Nothing has really changed. In much of the world, a woman can’t walk alone to the market or ride on a bus without facing a real threat of being accosted. And if she is, it’s assumed to be her fault. She shouldn’t have been in that part of town or wearing those clothes. Or, in other words, she should have been supervised by a man.

The belief is that men cannot control themselves so women must be protected from them, ironically by other men. It’s ridiculous. If the problem is men out of control, they should be locked up, not the women. But no matter. This is the “boys will be boys” defense that so many men used for so long to manipulate women into sexual compliance in the workplace.

It was called “being fun” and “playing nice”. You did it, or you didn’t go very far. Luckily for me, I never aspired to anything like fame or fortune, so I wasn’t subjected to much of it. But I knew women who were. Some unwillingly, and some willingly. Remember the career plan called “Sleeping with the Boss” and going to college to get an “MRS”?

It’s time for us all to do better. Men, you’re on notice. Women, you need to stand up for yourselves and get evidence. We don’t need another witch hunt.

Everyone keeps saying we should do a better job of screening people for mental health issues, though no one really has a good solution for it. People who call therapists or show up at clinics have already identified themselves as someone with problems. But what do we do about the eccentric neighbor no one really talks to who is silently storing up guns and ammo and perfecting his manifesto?

There’s a lot of talk about PCPs (Personal Care Physicians) doing the screening when people show up in the office for something entirely unrelated. Problem with this is that most people don’t HAVE a PCP and those who do rarely visit him or her. A better place would be the ER, where the bulk of our population goes for routine health care. But then just how should it be done?

I hear horror stories from my clients who made the mistake of telling the wrong person that they were depressed, or sometimes heard voices, or (God help them!) sometimes thought about killing themselves. Those people ended up facing down a sheriff’s deputy wanting to handcuff them and take them off to Green Oaks.

Of course Green Oaks, and the few other remaining emergency mental health facilities, quickly screen these people and determine that they don’t require hospitalization. Or more properly, that they already have more really serious cases than they have beds for. It’s an expensive, humiliating waste of precious resources. And you can bet those clients never risk talking to anyone about their problems again!

What the government would have doctors do is read through one of several approved surveys designed to screen for depression, anxiety and alcohol and drug use. Worse yet, doctors would simply HAND these to their patients to fill out for themselves, scan the results and file them away. Boxes checked, asses fully covered.

Problem is everyone lies on those surveys. And most of them are designed to trigger some sort of serious intervention if even one question is marked yes. There has to be a middle ground where a medical professional can ask a few questions about depression, anxiety or other symptoms and direct people to qualified care without alerting the authorities.

The simple fact is that everyone gets depressed and anxious sometimes. And most people have thought, at least fleetingly, about suicide. Hearing a voice when no one is there or seeing an unexplained shadow move across the room are both common symptoms of anxiety and sleep deprivation. A problem? Yes. A need for hospitalization? No!

Clients tell me all the time that it took a while before they trusted me enough to tell me about their most frightening symptoms. Things they had told no one else, especially not their doctors, for fear of being put in the hospital. Doctors SHOULD screen for mental health issues. But then, instead of calling the sheriff, they should discuss treatment options, hand out information and make referrals to people like me.

There’s something magical about the number 70 in my husband’s mind. As in 70 degrees. In the spring when the outside temperature hits 70, he starts up his whining about how it’s too hot in the house. Of course he’s wearing jeans, socks and a long sleeve shirt. When I suggest he dress more appropriately for the weather, I get the long rant I’ve come to know as “I Shouldn’t Have to (Blank) In My Own House!”

Likewise when the temperature hits 70 in the fall, he begins to whine about it being too cold in the house. And he’s wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. When I tell him to put on some clothes, the rant starts up. I’ve long stopped listening to it. I just wait until he runs out of steam and then give him the deep, meaningful sigh I perfected raising my two boys.

I have no patience with all this. I grew up in a place where it REALLY got cold, not this wimpy 40s and 50s with the occasional overnight freeze. I have a fluffy robe and fur-lined slippers. I even have a knit cap, gloves and socks that are designated solely to wear in bed. Because though Mr. Whiny wants it 85 in the house during the winter, he still wants it 65 in the bedroom when we sleep.

However, he is so delicate that he actually drags a propane-powered heater into our bathroom, blocks off the doors and windows, then fires that baby up whenever he takes a shower. This is so he won’t be even slightly cool during the three or four minutes it takes him to dry off and get dressed. In boxer shorts and a T-shirt!

I’ve bought him sweaters, slippers, robes. He won’t consider wearing them. (But the propane heater is perfectly justified.) All I get for my trouble is another rant about how he should be able to wear anything he wants, any time of year, in his own house. That’s what I get for marrying a city boy. Whenever we go out in the cold, I have to insist he take a coat.

“We’ll be in the car and then the store,” he grumps. “I won’t need it.”

“This from the man who needs it to be 95 degrees before he can shower? What if we have car trouble? You want to be changing a tire in that shirt with a wind chill of 35?”

Gruffly he tosses his coat in the back seat. He just doesn’t know. For years after I moved to Texas I still carried cat litter, flares, snow boots, blankets, a shovel and plenty of candles and matches. Did you know you can warm up the inside of your car to an acceptable temperature with one candle? Just crack a window. And for God’s sake wear your coat!

Over the years I switched to a parasol, hand fans and shade cloth. It’s the heat you have to fight down here.

A key issue in our society is the interplay between personal freedom and public safety. At what point does protecting the community outweigh the rights of the individual? This didn’t used to be a problem because, for a very long time, no one had any rights. All you had in the way of power or property was what you could wrest from your neighbors by strength of arms, ties of blood or sheer cunning.

Life was cheap. Individuals who were inconvenient, annoying or dangerous had a way of just disappearing, be it a bastard baby, a feeble-minded cousin or a psychotic ruler. Through some combination of neglect and violence, the “undesirables” were weeded out. These included most of those people who would today be deemed mentally ill. It was savage and inefficient.

Somewhere along the line we decided that everyone has rights and “mentally ill” was something to be determined by a properly trained (or adequately bribed) practitioner. When the designation was made, the persons in question were placed in institutions which invariably became hell holes from which the only escape was death.

Then we became further enlightened and decided to actually treat the mentally ill rather than simply confine them. Thus began a great wave of psychiatric experimentation which gave us the lobotomy and Thorazine. But sometimes people were still locked up for life for only the vaguest of reasons by people who merely wanted to be rid of them.

So our government decided to empty out the “insane asylums” and instead put our money into community mental health centers which could provide treatment without confinement. The idea was that family would step in to sustain the disadvantaged and get them the help they so needed (thus completely ignoring the fact that the family was usually completely incapable of providing such care).

Therefore most of the newly freed mentally ill ended up, not with family who were taking them to community centers for treatment, but out on the street and, increasingly, into another type of institution. The penal system. It is estimated that around 60% of the incarcerated have a diagnosable mental disorder. Thus we have simply traded one jail for another.

But it’s worse than that. Due to a lack of residential treatment facilities and the fact that attendance is voluntary, people who really need help usually have to go through the justice system and be forced into it. And there we are, right back at involuntary confinement.

Surely there must be a middle ground. There should be a way that the dangerously mentally ill who refuse treatment can be impelled into facilities, but there should also be oversight so that the falsely accused can appeal their sentences. And those who improve should be allowed to regain their freedom.

But who makes all these decisions? The judges, the doctors, the families? And how are we going to make sure that another desperately ill individual doesn’t get the opportunity to shoot up a church service?

As some of you already know, my beloved father is in failing health. For the last two weeks he’s been in a hospice house. Staying here with him has certainly been an education in how people deal with death and dying.

First of all, this place is a palace compared to many nursing homes. My Dad gets a big private room with a bay window and a fold-out couch for his wife to sleep on overnight. Housekeeping comes in daily to sweep, mop, dust and do up the bathroom. The nurses are never more than a buzz away.

There’s a nice kitchen filled with comfort food provided by a host of volunteers. The dining room has board games and puzzles to work. You can rest in the den on comfy couches in front of a cozy fireplace. Or you can relax on wicker furniture surrounded by living plants in the sunny atrium. We might have enjoyed the lovely garden had it not been 35 degrees outside.

Since I’ve been here, several people have come and gone, so to speak. Along with all of them were family and friends spending their last days with their loved ones. Some of these families adopt what could only be described as a party atmosphere. They order in pizza, talk, laugh and enjoy the board games.

My stepmother (who could carry on a lengthy conversation with a utility pole) knows all their names, where they’re from, what they do for a living, whom they are coming to see and what that person’s condition is.

Others (like me) are quiet and introspective. They sit in the dining room staring silently into their coffee cups or shuffle up and down the halls, eyes on their feet. I wave at people when I run to the kitchen to get more ice for my Diet Coke, but don’t stay to chat. I don’t care who those people are or where they came from. All that matters to me is the reason we are all here.

Once a day I head out to a nearby lake and take a brisk walk. That’s when I do my crying. Hard as it is to let go of my father, it’s harder still to see him in this limbo between life and death. I’m truly in a daze. Hours pass without my noticing. Even my old standby (reading) is impossible. I just stare at the page uncomprehending.

In the last few days my Dad has gone from eating, drinking and being relatively talkative to lying silent and still, taking nothing by mouth. The nurses tell me he is now in the “active phase of dying”. Hard to conceive of this as “active” but maybe more is going on than I can perceive.

At least my father is passing swathed in comfort and surrounded by love. Family, neighbors, friends and coworkers come by daily. I can only hope I get the same care when it’s my time to go.

I like to read history and therefore I’m continually amazed when folks tell me something has never happened before. When I prove to them that yes, yes it has, they then try to convince me that it’s never been so bad. Wrong again. Historically, things have usually been much, much worse. More damage, more death, more suffering.

It isn’t hard to see why we believe everything is worse now than ever. It’s our 24-hour news cycle with its incessant need for a disaster at the top of every hour. The news team then proceeds to “cover”, in just a few minutes, issues that can take lifetimes to fully understand. But we’re all so saturated with information, we seldom dig deeper. We just accept that things are going downhill steadily.

Many of my clients, in battling depression and anxiety, have given up on watching the news all together. It’s just too upsetting. And truly, there’s not much anyone can do about any of it, so why pile misery upon misery? (Except for the fact that misery, like sex, sells lots of commercial spots.) This brings up the perennial question of reality versus perception.

Two people can experience exactly the same tragedy and, while one of them bounces back fairly quickly, the other can lapse into despair. Why? In the psych world we talk about things like “temperament” and “resiliency” but the fact is we really don’t know. The answer is firmly grounded in the different ways individuals perceive their lives.

I like to say that perception becomes reality. For example, if you’re a teenager without a cell phone (it DOES happen), your perception may be that your parents are just being cruel. If you’re another teenager without the LATEST cell phone, but still have one that works perfectly well, you’re perception may be exactly the same – your parents are purposely ruining your life!

Let’s take a look at the mess Hurricane Maria made of Puerto Rico. That monster storm almost wiped the island off the face of the map and took 49 precious lives. No food or clean water, no electricity, massive human suffering. A lot of people try to tell me that it’s never been so bad and it’s all our fault due to global warming. Nonsense.

First of all, you only have to go back 85 years, a mere blink in historical time, before you have a hurricane that was at least as strong. (The San Ciprian of 1932 which killed 257.) And most of the people who endured that storm already had no electricity or modern sewage treatment facilities. Plus they hadn’t even dreamt of something as luxurious as air conditioning. Is it really so much worse today?

And the island survived. The palm trees grew back and Puerto Rico returned to being a tourist paradise. Will it happen again? You’re durn tootin’! So don’t give up. Just remember your Lion King songs. There really is a Circle of Life. Try to enjoy it!

Frequent readers of this column know that I’m just a short, old lady who’s battling breast cancer (for the second time!) while trying to run a business, grow a garden and wedge in a few visits with my grandchildren. I say this not for sympathy, but to let you know that physically, I’m about as threatening a bag full of teddy bears. There’s no need to release the hounds when I show up.

In order to keep up my strength between chemo sessions, I like to take a brisk walk up and down my street first thing in the morning, and I mean 6:30 am because if I don’t do it then, it ain’t happening. I wear a reflective vest and a head lamp. And I stay well over on the side of the road facing traffic. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? But it is because of the dogs on my street.

I can only go so far in one direction before I come upon the house where they let their pit bull run loose. Because there isn’t a light on in the house when I come by, I can only assume they leave the beast out all night. It invariably crosses into the street and lunges at me snarling and barking, forcing me to stay my stride and walk backwards because if I take my eyes off it, it attacks anew.

It usually just follows me a few houses down and then gives up. But one day it was standing in the middle of the street refusing to let me move so much as an inch when a line of cars began to pile up. Seeing what was happening, the drivers fanned out and approached the dog, horns blaring. That sent it back to its house and allowed me to escape.

If I walk the other way, I pass the house where they have a mixed pack of dogs that live on the porch. That’s where their houses are. That’s where their bowls are. What isn’t there is anything whatsoever to stop those dogs from running at me and into the street. At least they’re not pit bulls.

Once I elude the pack, I come upon the house where two collie-type dogs live chained to utility poles. They’re usually so wound up in their restraints that they can barely stand up. They yip at me plaintively and break my heart. I’m tempted to go disentangle them, but I fear getting a load of buckshot for my trouble.

Now Kaufman County has a leash law. And the State of Texas has a law saying you aren’t supposed to leave your dogs tied up for more than an hour or two. But just try to get anyone to enforce those laws. I’ve called and called, but nothing ever changes. They say you can judge a righteous man by how he treats his animals. If that’s the case, some people on my street fall well short of righteousness.

One of the magazines I get is Entertainment Weekly. I page through it quickly because I recognize so few of the featured shows. It’s to the point that I READ about more entertainment than I actually consume. When I do get to watch TV (chemo time!) my choice of programs makes most people wonder about me. I mean more than usual.

One of my favorites is “My 600 Pound Life” which is about obese people navigating their way through weight-loss surgery. Every time my husband walks in when that’s on he gets grossed out. “I just don’t see how you can watch that stuff,” he sneers.

“That’s because you’ve never studied Family Systems Theory,” I answer waving him off. “Now be quiet! The enabler is making excuses to the enforcer.” Once he’s out of the room I toggle back to “Forensic Files” so I can brush up on how to make sure his body is never found. (Just kidding, sweetie!)

I also like “Intervention” (drug addiction) and “Botched” (plastic surgery). I especially love it when they bring in the therapist to uncover (in one session) all the deep-seated emotional pain the subject is masking with his habit. But my all-time favorite is “Hoarders” and its more disgusting cousin “Animal Hoarders”.

As a therapist, I’m fascinated to hear people justify keeping four storage units full of “collectibles” (not to mention the floor to ceiling piles in their homes), or why they feel compelled to store years’ worth of their own poop in plastic totes. My husband is outta there once the theme music starts.

During nearly every program some overwhelmed (but well-meaning) family member will exclaim “No one should be allowed to live this way!” But this is America. Can’t we stuff our homes and ourselves full of anything we want? Well, no. Eventually the Health Department condemns your house as a fire hazard, cities often limit how many animals you’re allowed to keep and surgeons have codes of ethics.

Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about another kind of hoarder. There’s no TV show about this one, yet, but give it time. I’m talking about the gun hoarder. Now before you go all Second Amendment on me, I own a gun and I love shooting (man-shaped) targets with it. And I’m a crack shot, so don’t get any ideas. But I have one handgun. That’s it.

Though I think it would be cool to fire an automatic weapon, I don’t think any ordinary citizen should own one. Just like we limit how many cats you can keep (and no lions or tigers!) I don’t think you should be able to have as many guns as you can cram into your den, background checks be damned.

The sicko who shot up Las Vegas should have set someone’s alarm bells ringing. Just like bars are responsible for cutting off anyone who’s obviously drunk, gun dealers and gun clubs should be held accountable when a customer or member has clearly lost perspective.

You want to get a room full of therapists going, just mention couples counseling. Empathetic groans and tales of woe are sure to follow in quick succession. Trying to save someone’s relationship is a thankless, often impossible task. When I take on a couple in crisis, the only thing I know for sure is that I’m going to make one fee for being yelled at by two people.

But I bravely soldier on and try to make some progress. The problem is almost always inadequate communication. It usually starts right from the beginning when couples don’t talk about the important stuff before deciding to be a couple. They’re simply too busy falling in love to ask the right questions. Like what we call The Big Three – Sex, Kids and Money.

I usually start with money because it seems the least threatening, but it’s really most likely to destroy a relationship. Before you leap into love, you really have to understand how someone handles his money and that means being observant and asking some uncomfortable questions. Strangely, people are less hesitant to get into bed with someone than to find out how much credit card debt he has.

Does he (or she) consistently spend more than he makes? Does he have any savings? Does he know where his money is and where it needs to go? Can he balance a checkbook? Never get into the position of lending money or paying off some else’s debt. If you don’t get the money situation firmly in hand before you commit, I can guarantee you’ll be fighting about it until you break up.

Then there’s kids. Do you want kids? Do you already have kids? Whom do you think should take care of the kids? How should they be raised, disciplined? A great way to find out about this is to observe your intended with some kids, and check out his (or her) family of origin. For good or bad, we learn how to be parents from our own parents.

Is there a history of physical or emotional abuse? Does the family get along or is there always a fight? Be wary of someone who doesn’t want you to meet their family or has no relationship with them. Maybe he has a good reason for that, but you need to know what went down in order to understand how your intended is going to operate in a domestic situation.

Finally, we come to sex. How do you like it? How often do you want it? Are you able to talk about it without feeling embarrassed or pressured? What I hear over and over is that the sex was great until…. The kids were born. Her mother came to live with you. You found out about all the pay-day loans he took out. It usually has more to do with anger, disappointment and resentment than anything hormonal.

So to avoid conflict, ask those hard questions right from the start. And get communicating!

I used to love air travel. It was so exciting to board a plane and roar off into the blue. The airlines treated you like royalty with meal choices and free drinks. Your friends or family could see you off right at the gate and meet you there, too. People dressed up to travel and checked their bags with Red Caps. Shoot, I’m old enough to remember when you could even smoke on planes, though I’m glad that changed.

Now people wear pajamas and flip-flops and bring fast-food meals with them. They compete for overhead bins and flow over their arm rests into my seat. I’m lucky to get a bag of peanuts thrown at me and a drink costs $10.

And when I go to the airport I have to be mentally prepared to strip down and be felt up by some TSA agent. I don’t know what it is about me, but I get stopped each and every time. I guess “short, old white lady” is the new racial profiling. Somehow I’m considered more likely to be a terrorist than all those other people who breeze through security without even slowing their pace.

Once I was stopped because I was bringing my family a box of chocolates. It was a two-pound Russell Stover’s assortment that had just come from the store and was unopened and unwrapped. A monstrous woman pulled me from the line and informed me that my candy had tested positive for explosives residue. Lots of that at my local Brookshire’s, I guess.

While another agent wanded my chocolates and pawed through my carry-on bag, the Amazon gloved up and got busy with me. And she was very thorough. I involuntarily jumped and squeaked when she got to the crotch area. She hesitated and asked me if I wanted to go with her to a private room.

“No thanks,” I answered. The last thing I wanted was to be alone with her without any witnesses present. Eventually they handed me back my candy and let me go.

This last time I was stopped because I didn’t take my computer out of the case.

“I thought we didn’t have to do that anymore,” I protested.

“Only for Pre-Pass passengers,” the agent replied, pulling on his gloves.

He patted me down while another agent wanded my computer and went through my bag. Standing on the cold floor, I began to shiver and the agent kindly let me step back into my sandals. It was humiliating watching everyone else striding out of the X-ray machine and confidently gathering up their possessions off the conveyer belt. They cast knowing glances at me as they passed. I might as well have had a scarlet A sewn onto my shirt.

I’m not sure what to do. I guess I could go through all the steps to become a “Pre-Pass” passenger, whatever they are. Maybe I’ll just dress in a burka and scream discrimination next time I get stopped.

Interesting question. It’s what I yell at my cat after I’ve been holding the door open for five minutes and she hasn’t moved a muscle. It’s also an important consideration in the psych world for things like motivation, self-control and self-esteem. In short, where is your locus of power? Inside or outside?

Psychologists have a hard time quantifying terminology we all take for granted. Like consciousness. We all think we know pretty well when someone is conscious and when he’s not. But, as we find out from coma victims, we can often be dead wrong. We look at brain activity, muscle movements, reflexes. None of them can be trusted to give us the crucial answer to whether someone is “in there” or not.

Likewise personality. We all talk about different personality types as if they were clearly defined. But when you get down to putting it in a diagnosis, such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, it takes thousands of studies and years of controversy to come up with even a general listing of what we mean by that. So in the trenches, where I and most therapists work, an easier question is, “Does your motivation, self-worth, sense of control come from inside or outside?”

I come from a family of severe self-motivators. No one has to tell us to get up, get busy and accomplish something before the day is over. We show up early, stay late and take our achievements personally. We are the exception rather than the rule. Most people need motivation to come from outside, either in the form of benefits (money, respect, power) or punishments (injuries, truancy court, jail).

Likewise most people get their sense of self-worth from outside. We listen to what other people say about us, judge how others react to us. Some of this only makes sense and is, in the profession, known as “reality testing”. If most people respond negatively to something we do or say, maybe we ARE at fault? The problem is that many people are selfish idiots. The feedback they give us is based on their own insecurities or their desire to manipulate us into serving their needs.

The time when the inside-outside dichotomy is particularly important is in adolescence. In making that transition from child to adult, we really have to define ourselves, apart from our families and culture. Parents can facilitate this by not insisting that their kids become their little clones right from the start. And by not labeling. There’s a fine but fundamental distinction between saying your kid did something stupid and calling him stupid.

As I see it, much of our misery comes from trying to be someone we’re not and trying to please people who can’t be pleased. In the end, it all has to come from inside. You have to answer the basic questions, “Who am I?”, “What are my values?” and “What are my goals?” If someone else makes these decisions for you, then who are you, really?

Starting chemo again, I knew I was going to lose my hair. AGAIN. It started late last week. At first I noticed a lot of hair in my brush in the morning. Then I wrangled something that looked like a tarantula out of my bath drain. One morning I got that burning sensation on my head. I tugged at a lock of hair and it came out as easy as a knife out of a jar of mayo. I had a full day of work ahead of me.

Unfortunately, it was the day I was going to make “slime” with all my kid clients. If you don’t know what slime is, you have no kids. It’s basically a mixture of glue, shaving cream, food coloring and borax. In a few minutes, you have a semi-fluid glob of goo, offering endless possibilities for play. Kids love tossing it around, drawing it out into long strings and, of course, tasting it. (Not recommended.)

A lot of it hits the floor. I had more than one kid retrieve his glop only to cry, “Ew! There’s a hair in it!” Since it was a GRAY hair, there was no use trying to be coy. “Sorry about that,” I chuckled nervously. “Here, let me get that out for you.” I found myself vacuuming between clients. When I got home I marched my husband out to the porch with his clippers and had him shave me bald.

Now it’s time for the wig, which isn’t looking so good. I probably need to get a new one. The problem is I have a big head. (Don’t start!) A lot of the styles I try on are too tight, and they’re all expensive! Sheesh! I’m getting ready to pay off that huge insurance deductible and now I need to drop a few hundred on a wig?

But the benefits were immediate. I got in the shower, bobbing and weaving as I usually do trying to avoid getting my hair wet when I suddenly realized I HAVE no hair! Showering is a breeze! No more “product”. No more calculating just how many more days I can go without a shampoo. (Sorry guys, when you have long hair you do NOT wash it daily.)

Only problem is that the change hasn’t made it to my legs and underarms yet. Still have to use the razor. For now. And I still have to sit quietly for three hours while poison drips into my “port” every third week. Oh well, it could always be worse. At least I have insurance and a couple of good weeks between infusions.

And people are polite about the wig. They say things like, “Oh, you got a haircut. It’s cute!” Instead of “I see you’ve trotted out that ratty, old, bargain-basement rug again. Have you considered a nice scarf or turban?”

A lot is being written today about narcissism, maybe because so many non-professionals (and some professionals) are accusing our current president of being one. (Probably not.) Of course the type of personality that drives one to even consider running for president tracks distinctly to the narcissistic side. So you could make a convincing argument that most of our past presidents and also-rans have some narcissism in their blood. So just what is a narcissist, or what we affectionately call F60.81?

Well according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the Bible of the psych world), you have to have several characteristics. You have to have a grandiose sense of self-importance; fantasies of unlimited power; the belief that you’re special, or above others; the requirement for excessive admiration; a sense of entitlement; lack of empathy; envy or resentment toward others; arrogance and a tendency to exploit people. Hello Hilary Clinton!

In the real world of therapy, though, nothing is as clear cut. I often find myself vacillating between a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the understanding that the person in question is just a selfish jerk. In the end, it really doesn’t make much difference to the people who have to live with one of these buttheads. It’s just misery piled upon misery.

It’s interesting to note that narcissists and their cousins, psychopaths, seldom come to therapy voluntarily. I deal mostly with their victims. In psychology, as in most areas of study, theories abound as to what makes a narcissist. One that seems to help people understand well is called Object Theory. Basically, this deals with how babies begin to differentiate between themselves and others, termed “objects” in this theory.

The most important object in a baby’s life is the caretaker who feeds, clothes and comforts him. If children have good caretakers who nurture and respect them, they develop all those great characteristics that psychopaths lack – love, empathy, a genuine concern for the condition of other people. If not, the children see others not as people, but as objects to be used and abandoned.

I usually encounter the typical narcissist/psychopath when dealing with an abused spouse. The abuser sees his spouse as a possession that is either useful or not in any given moment. Like a wrench or a coffeemaker. When the abuser needs you, you’d better be there and performing flawlessly. When he doesn’t need you, your place is on the shelf, patiently waiting to again satisfy his needs. That you might have needs or other things you want to do is simply not considered

So are these jerks born that way, or simply the victims of circumstance? Theory leans heavily to the “born that way” hypothesis, basically because lots of people come out of very abusive, neglectful childhoods NOT being narcissists or psychopaths. And what’s the difference? Well, your narcissist uses and discards people in his overarching hunger for power. The psychopath truly enjoys inflicting pain and terror and generally doesn’t want to be president.

I’ve lived my entire life inside Tornado Alley and yet I’ve never seen one. Most people would say “Good for you!” But I guess there’s a little storm chaser in me. I’ve always wanted to witness one of those magnificent funnels bending and twisting along the prairie, churning to bits everything in its path. People who live along those paths may beg to differ.

I like big weather. I’m not afraid of the flash and crash of a violent thunderstorm, as long as I’m inside. I’m fascinated by flood and gale, on video. I thrill with awe at the incredible power of wind and water to remake the landscape, while studying the aftermath. I even like hurricanes, from far inland.

I love to watch the entire track of a hurricane as filmed from space. Seeing them being born and growing, it’s hard not to consider them living creatures. They spin along their arcs, pulsing like fireworks as they heat and cool. Could they not be the flowers of the ocean, blooming and fading within the span of a few days?

Personally, I don’t understand why hurricanes get such a bad rap anyway. They’re really quite majestic and a vital agent for the distribution of water and air around the globe. They build up barrier islands, regenerate wetlands, break up dead zones. Of course I’ve never had to withstand a hurricane. I don’t plan to. When something that big and destructive is headed your way, you just gotta drop everything and run for high ground.

I’ve never understood people who build beach houses or develop beach-front property. I guess if you’ve got money to burn, go for it. But why would you put something that expensive in a place where the odds are its going to be wiped away every few years? I think the ancient Polynesians had it right to use nothing but bamboo and thatch on the shore.

Modern humans never seem to get the concept that when you build next to a large body of water, you will be washed away by it at some point. Likewise, if you build in a low-lying spot, you will be flooded out. Regularly. Build on the side of a volcano, no matter how inactive it might seem, and you, or your progeny will be buried in a mud slide or fried to a crisp by a pyroclastic flow.

We ought to get that part, but every time it happens, we’re shocked and start looking for someone else to blame. The current scapegoat is Global Warming. Give me a break.

We can’t even accurately predict the weather, for goodness sake! Where do we get off thinking we can control it? Well, I guess in times past we reckoned the gods were angry with us and demanded the priest offer sacrifice on our behalf. Now we believe it’s because of our cars and window units, the only remedy being the swift institution of stringent carbon taxes. Get ready to pay up.

Re-reading my last column in light of the tragic events at Charlottesville, I was horrified to see that I had used the term “race” twice when writing about my duty to reproduce. Since genetic testing has confirmed me to be whiter than a mayonnaise sandwich with the crusts cut off, some might infer that I was talking about my duty to bolster the Caucasian race over the “incursions” of other, darker races.

Nothing could be further from the truth. When I said “race” I meant HUMAN race. Our country has truly fallen from the ideals I grew up with when merely having white skin implies you’re a racist, but here we are. Time to have a talk about what the term really means.

Scientists have a hard time even defining “race”. Plants and animals differentiate over time due to changing environmental pressures, but mostly due to one factor only. Isolation. Darwin pondered the theory of evolution while noting that finch populations, segregated on certain islands, developed different beak styles to exploit available food resources. If the isolation continues, populations become separate species, no longer able to breed with the others.

The theory is that humans changed in much the same way. Those in colder climates became short and wide (like me) to conserve heat. Those in hotter climates became tall and thin to dissipate heat. White skin is theorized to have been an advantage in the darker north as a way of maximizing a limited supply of sunlight. Isolation led to a lack of interbreeding thus making the differences endemic.

But we were never so far apart that we became different species. Now that we’re no longer geographically separated we can interbreed at will. Many of us feel this is a good thing because the most adaptive traits from each population will tend to be carried forward, strengthening us all. But, there are still some (of all races) who think that isolation is the way to go.

When we talk about race, we immediately start in on physical characteristics – skin, eye and hair color. But when we get down to it, what we’re really talking about is culture. And that knows no color. I recently read a book about a (black) evangelist from Africa and the problems he encountered dealing with people from different tribes. They were all black, but that didn’t stop them from wanting to kill each other.

Different groups of white people have done the same thing throughout history. Roman and Hun, Briton and Saxon, German and Frenchman. You see, hate knows no race. White Supremacists and Antifa are both hate groups. They’re both isolated and, quite frankly, completely insane. For now, at least, they’re fringe groups and the vast majority of Americans (of all races) can’t stomach their messages.

We SHOULD be condemning them BOTH as spreaders of hate and violence, but instead I feel we’re being pressured to pick one or the other. What a sad day for America.

As a child, I was an unabashed tomboy. I didn’t want to play dolls or dress-up. I had no interest in babies and I certainly didn’t want to grow up to be a Mommy, which was one of the three choices I had, the other two being Teacher and Secretary. Then I turned 22 and the alarm went off on my biological clock. All the sudden I wanted babies and I wanted them NOW!

I suspect my Mom never wanted to be a mommy either. I’ll never forget what she said when I called to tell her I was pregnant with her first grandchild. “Just don’t expect me to babysit!” Which was strange as she was living in Kansas and I was in North Carolina. But then she never liked my husband. It was something we could agree upon later.

I picked a man with good genetics who turned out to be nothing but a mooch. I jettisoned him right after my second boy was born and never looked back. But I shouldn’t be too harsh. I did get two very healthy, smart sons out of him. (Maybe someday he’ll show the slightest bit of interest in them.) So, in the end, I felt compelled to reproduce. And it’s a good thing.

They say we’re reaching a point in many countries where there are too few babies being born to replace the current generation. It’s an interesting turn of events because when I was young, we had an entirely different concern – over-population. In 1968 Paul Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb forecasting the dire situation when our race ran out of resources. Birth control was our only hope.

But, like a lot of forecasters, Paul simply took current conditions and drew them out to ridiculous lengths. (Ice-free north pole, anyone?) Commentator Nicholas Eberstadt wisely pointed out that the population was not growing because we were breeding like bunnies, but because we were no longer dying like flies.

It’s true. You don’t have to go back too far in our history to come to a place where you needed 10 children just to make sure a couple of them would still be alive to help you in your old age. Which you weren’t going to have because if you were a woman, you’d likely die in childbirth and, if you were a man, by of a combination of war and overwork.

But a lot of people were swayed by that over-population argument. I heard friends and relatives spouting the nonsense that they were being noble NOT bringing babies into such a world as this. First, the world is a better place for humans than it’s EVER been. Second, you might just substitute “selfish” for “noble” and be nearer the truth for some of them.

Well I did my duty to the race and raised up two righteous, intelligent, hard-working men. Between them they now have six progeny. I believe they all make this world a better place.

1. Weight Loss When my ordeal began two and a half years ago, I lugged around 155 pounds on my five-foot-two frame and was bitterly considering going up a pant size. After chemo and seven surgeries I’ve lost 25 pounds. And because I have no appetite and food all tastes dull, I’ve kept it off. At last I can drag my finger across that dratted BMI chart and rest on a solid square of “healthy weight”. Breast cancer, I couldn’t have done it without you!

2. Hair Loss Yes, it’s a bit disconcerting going bald, but the upside is you don’t just lose the hair on your head. You lose ALL your hair! I got to go for over six months without even thinking about a razor. It’s great never having to worry before pulling on a pair of shorts. And as exciting as it was to feel that first bit of peach fuzz on my scalp, it also meant resuming my regular visits with Lady Schick.

3. Free Perm My hair has always been as straight and flat as a ruler. Once or twice a year, I would endure hours of rolling and chemicals to get a bit of curl. Which would then grow out into my habitual look – lady who needs another perm. Now I have natural curls and I love the heck out of them.

4. People Think You’re Brave Honestly, I don’t get this one. All I ever really do is show up. I arrive at the appointed time, strip down and get up on the gurney. Then I wait patiently while they slide me through tubes, pump me full of chemicals or lop off diseased chunks of my flesh. Sure, it’s no picnic in the park, but it isn’t exactly the thing you’d expect to be awarded a medal for. “For uncommon valor while lying quietly in the face of the enemy” just doesn’t sound heroic. But considering all the things people COULD think about me, I’m pretty happy with “so brave!”.

5. No One Expects You to Volunteer for Anything Before my cancer, Carter Blood Bank was about to drive me crazy with solicitation calls. They loved me because I have B Negative and a vein on my right forearm that might as well be a spigot. But I’ve got no time to drive to Dallas – on a weekday - to donate. I told them that whenever they came to Kaufman County, I’d be there, but that didn’t stop the calls. Once I told them I had cancer they struck me off their list, apparently forever.

6. People Think You’re Strong Strong is not how I see myself except in the sense that I strongly object to chemo, or I vomited strongly for 12 hours after my last surgery. But now all I have to do is show up and people celebrate like I’d returned from the dead. Hey, I’m not knocking it! In fact, I strongly enjoy it.

Well I’ve been reading a lot (big surprise!) and again juxtaposed a couple of articles that really gave me pause. The first was an interview with Gabor Mate', author of the bestseller In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a book about addictions. The second was about our growing dependence on our devices and the “online experience”. The article was entitled The Age of FoMO by Sharon Begley.

I’m so behind the times (ask my son) that I didn’t know what that meant. At first I feared it was about our basic lack of civility, something akin to MoFo. Then I looked it up (online, of course) and discovered it’s an acronym for Fear of Missing Out. Being naturally introverted, I’ve never been troubled by this. I enjoy missing out if it means I have more time alone with my thoughts.

Starting with Mr. Mate' and his theory of addiction, I noted that he dismissed the “medical model” that it’s a disease and even the AA model that it’s about changing behavior. He believes that addictions are a response to trauma. The purpose of the addiction is to give comfort, distract from pain and soothe stress. He makes the point that not everybody who’s traumatized becomes addicted, but everyone who becomes addicted was traumatized.

This usually starts in childhood with trauma that is either short-lived (surviving a flood) or endemic (growing up with drug-addicted parents). Our undeveloped brains don’t know how to effectively process the stress and we struggle to find anything that helps. In his work Mate' has seen that the same “incentive and motivation circuits and the same brain chemicals” are at work whether the addiction is to cocaine or shopping. And they are all triggered by stress

In our modern world, a lot of that stress revolves around our digital devices and our inability to be disconnected from them for even a few moments. For many people today, being “offline” is tantamount to being dead! Researchers found, not surprisingly, that people turn to their smartphones to avoid the fear of being unconnected.

Now feeling connected is one of our basic human needs, our first and most important connection being with our caregivers, usually parents. If Mate' is right and a breakdown in that vital, early connection sets the stage for addiction, is it any wonder so many of us can’t stop reading our texts or checking our FaceBook feeds?

One set of researchers even came up with a FoMO scale. They discovered that young men score higher than young women and younger people, in general, score higher than older ones. They then matched the results to how people felt they were meeting three core psychological needs – connectedness, competence and autonomy (feeling that we control our own lives.)

In general, a high FoMO correlated to a low score on the other three. Addicts also score low on those points. Psychologists haven’t yet made “Digital Addiction” a diagnosis, but be looking for it. And put down that phone!

I recently read three articles which, taken together, painted a rather depressing view of the up and coming generation. That, in itself, is nothing new. People have been complaining about “kids these days” since at least Aristotle’s time. But consuming these messages at one meal gave me a mild case of indigestion.

The first was about the loss of the summer job. When I was young, everyone wanted a summer job and competition could be fierce. These days, seasonal employers are having to go abroad to find hands willing to fry funnel cakes on the boardwalk or man lifeguard chairs at the public pool. I used to think kids had just grown lazy. They got everything they wanted without having to work, so why do it? This article took another tack.

The writers, who interviewed and polled young people, found out they had actually done the math. The amount of money a minimum wage summer job generated was nothing compared to the lifelong income gains from doing volunteer work or taking unpaid internships and hyping it up on a college application, provided you actually got into and completed that college

Another article tried to prove, scientifically, that hosting “hate speech” on a college campus damaged young people at the molecular level with horrific consequences. The final article all but proved that was complete nonsense. Honestly, how can just HEARING about Ann Coulter coming to your university compare to, say, being kidnapped by Boko Haram?

It’s true, prolonged stress can have devastating effects on people both emotionally and physically, but simply being exposed to differing opinions hardly constitutes prolonged stress. And you don’t have to go to Nigeria to find it. How about just growing up with a violent alcoholic as a parent? Or spending your early years in and out of hospitals fighting a disease you didn’t ask for, but your siblings claim was the ruination of their lives?

Besides, those summer jobs were never really about the money. They were about making a first foray into the world of adulthood. Few of us honestly depended on those tiny checks to make ends meet, which is one of the fallacies of the $15 minimum wage argument. Sure you can’t support a family of four on less than $8 an hour. But guess what? You aren’t supposed to! Those jobs are for kids! They’re entry level jobs or second jobs.

I worked (nearly full-time) for most of my college years. Yet I never once thought that I should be able to settle down and live comfortably by waiting tables or delivering pizzas. But all those “menial” jobs taught me something, something that you don’t get in the rarified air of a corporate internship. They tested me, toughened me, exposed me to things I never dreamt existed

Now there’s nothing wrong with volunteer work. Lots of people do it. And lots of those people work full-time as well. Maybe our kids are just a little lazy, a little wimpy.

People know that my politics stand distinctly right of center. What they don’t know is that I used to stand distinctly left of center. But my politics really aren’t any different now than they’ve ever been. What’s changed is the swinging pendulum of political thought. Today we’ve gone so far left, even old hippies like me can seem alt-right.

(Not that I was ever REALLY a hippie. I washed and shaved too much. And spent my time reading and writing, not doping and listening to blaring music. But your sons see ONE picture of you in bell bottoms wearing John Lennon glasses and you’re pegged for life.)

I don’t understand why people have such a hard time dealing with change. I read a study once concluding that we all think whatever times were like when we were growing up is the way they should be forever. So we’re continually alarmed when anything changes. Despite our amazing intelligence as a species and the fact that the only constant in our lives IS change!

We shouldn’t panic. All that’s really happening is that things are changing “back”. The pendulum swings, our lives circle (possibly the drain). Throughout our development we pass through many stages, we play many roles. Shakespeare was truly elegant when he wrote that we are all actors, who strut and fret away our brief time on stage. We worry about change when we should be embracing it.

One of the phrases I use (over and over) in counseling is “If you want your life to change, you’re going to have to start doing something different.” Usually people just want to have more money or make someone ELSE change. The first one demands education and hard work. The second is completely impossible. (You can either accept that person as he is or let him go.)

But many people don’t want to work hard and go to school! Sorry, that’s what it takes. As a small business person, I work all the time. And I’m always going to school, either for my license or to learn new software or negotiate an “upgrade” in some insurance company’s claim entry process. And then there’s the piles of stuff I read. The truth is that the minute you stop changing, you start decaying.

A perfect example of our unwillingness to change, even when it can truly benefit us, is the recidivism rate for criminals who go to prison. (As opposed to the criminals who run our country and just go home to their mansions, but that’s another story.) Many convicts barely get out before they’re back. I’ve heard more than one tell me he just didn’t know how to live on “the outside”.

Then there are those people whose anxiety and depression force them into another type of prison – staying in their rooms with nothing but the TV for company. The antidote for fear of change is, of course, faith. The basic belief that you CAN handle it and, ultimately, things will be okay.

I had a good mom. She taught us a wealth of skills and provided excellent nutrition. She was into health food long before it was a thing. I just thought everyone ate wheat germ and had two vegetables (one green, one yellow) for dinner each night. A brisk walk was a daily tradition I never questioned. I grew up healthy and strong.

But people these days are so very sick in body and spirit. I believe that’s because they never spend much time nourishing their bodies or spirits. I’ve begun to ask more about what my clients eat and it’s often total crap. Hot dogs, burgers, pasta, pizza, sugary drinks. No hint of a vegetable that’s not breaded and deep-fried. So lately I’ve begun to harp on the importance of good nutrition. I’ve even done a little experimenting.

As you MAY remember, I put in a vegetable garden every spring. And most years I get way too much of something I like way too little. But this was a good season. My freezer is full and there’s more coming. So I’ve started cooking up my extra produce and giving it to my clients. It’s astounding to witness the affect good, natural food has on someone’s mood.

First of all, the very act of giving food is a primal expression of love. The receiver can’t really help but feel cared for. Then when the food is specially made by someone who actually grew it. Well, that’s a thing most people don’t experience anymore. Food has become unvarying, impersonal, mass produced. It’s lost its magic.

It’s not like I’m some kind of gourmet cook, either. (Ask my sons.) But, thanks to my mom, I CAN cook and so that means I can create a pretty decent meal out of what’s available. Most of my clients can’t cook at all and so they have no idea how easy – and cheap – it can be to make something healthy and tasty.

The other day I boiled down a few pounds of bruised tomatoes with some onions, salt and fresh basil. Then I poured it over cooked elbow macaroni (whole wheat) and mixed it up. It didn’t look like much without the red food coloring of bottled pasta sauce, but the taste was heaven. My client reported that he started eating it and couldn’t stop until he’d finished the entire pan.

He reported that his “taste buds woke up”. He said he didn’t hurt so much. Of course a lot of that could have been my suggestion that his pain was caused (in part) by inflammation, the result of eating too much processed food. Let us not forget that the placebo remains the most effective medication in our arsenal.

Still it just can’t hurt to eat better. It’s all part of nurturing yourself. If your body is a temple containing a small spark of God’s divinity, how are you taking care of it? Try to keep your spark alive and well.

Before you go ballistic, remember that we’re all going to die of SOMETHING. And, despite the fact of my having cancer, the odds are still greater that I’ll die in a car accident. (Ask anyone who’s ever driven with me.) What I mean about the cancer is that I’m pretty sure I’ll be fighting it until it wins.

Oddly enough, I was going to entitle this column “Vindication At Last”. You MAY remember the trouble my surgeon gave me (the day of my surgery!) about not wanting to remove my “healthy” implant. This was unnecessary surgery, she admonished me. She was just going to lop off the “nodule of necrotic fat” and leave well enough alone. I argued (quite strongly) that she do what we had agreed upon and she finally gave in.

Well Monday she called to apologize and give me the good news that the lump was cancer as well. She offered me “kudos” for insisting on having the double. I was so jubilant to be proven right for once that I forgot this was not really good news. What it meant was that the cancer is very aggressive, it likes to eat fat and I’ve got plenty to spare.

So, more chemo for me. I’ll be having a “port” put in so as to have easy access to the poison which is going to be stronger than the last round. (Yea!) In preparation for this, I spent another day at the hospital being shot full of “markers” and “dyes” and slid under huge machines for various scans.

The tech for the CT kept telling me to “take a breath and HOLD IT!” with such an unvarying intonation, I wondered if it were part of the machine. The tech for my bone scan kept asking me vaguely concerning questions like “Do you have trouble with your feet?” And “Are you being treated for arthritis?”

When I said, “No, why?” She waved it off. “Oh nothing. It is not about the cancer.”

Ah yes, there’s that. So I won’t know anything for about a week. I’ll have my port put in next week, which will require anesthesia and someone to drive me home. And I’m going to be seeing a new oncologist, who allegedly “took the most interest” in my case when my surgeon presented it at her latest conference. Hope she gets a paper out of it.

Nice to be able to give all these medical professionals someone to practice on. Oh well. As I said, we’re all going to die of something. And I am blessed to have a good husband, good friends, good insurance, a comfortable home and a job I can do sitting down.

Many people concentrate on the bad things in life and thus aren’t paying attention to the everyday miracles of life and the opportunities they hold. Never forget that every day is a gift. Even the ones when you learn your cancer is getting worse.

One of the hardest things about my last surgery was that call I got the night before from my stepmother. My 88-year-old father was in ICU with double pneumonia. When you’re 88 that’s the kind of thing you die from! She told me he was scared and that he couldn’t talk to me because he was on a breathing apparatus.

At that moment, driving home from work having mentally prepared myself for (yet) another hospital stay, I felt as though God had finally given me more than I could take. But, as usual, I was wrong. For one thing, my stepmother was there with my Dad. Thank God for her. She always calls the ambulance whether he wants it or not.

And thank God for my husband, who was going to be there with me for my entire procedure and recuperation. Still, I went under anesthesia not knowing if my precious father would be “on this side of the sod”, as he likes to put it, when I came out. For that matter, I didn’t know whether I’d even come out! Times like those are when Faith is a mighty powerful resource.

The definition of Faith is believing in things you can’t see or can’t know. In a way, becoming a father is, itself, an act of faith. You just don’t have a lot of control over what’s going to happen, even though fathers-to-be are now encouraged to be part of the process, going through Lamaze courses and masking up in the delivery room. God help them, they now know that they SHOULD be changing diapers and making bottles. You’ve come a long way, fellas!

Of course good fathers have always been active in the care of their children, from the mundane to the sublime. The most important thing they can do is to pass on righteous values. Many of the teenaged boys I counsel have no fathers in the picture, or the ones they have aren’t very good role models. I encourage those boys to look away from the past, even the present, and to concentrate on the men they are to become. And that means becoming the kind of father a boy, or girl, can look up to.

So my surgery went fine. I was up and working around the garden way before the doctor said I could. (I had to laugh at the booklet of exercises she gave me insisting that some “activity” was crucial for my recovery. Let’s see. Pushing a stick out in front of me to the count of ten, or wielding a hoe for a few hours. That enough activity for you?)

And everything is okay, for now. I’m probably going to have to have chemo again which is worse than surgery by a long shot. But hey, I’m still on this side of the sod, and so is my father. There simply aren’t enough ways I can tell him all he’s meant to me. I love you, Dad!

One of the complaints I hear from my clients is how their medical care is sliding from “just okay” to “getting kinda scary”. Boy, can I relate. As some of you may recall, my breast cancer came back in a big way and I had to pretty much diagnose it myself. I went to the “oncologist” complaining about pain, redness and hardness and she just made me an appointment for six months.

I went to see the reconstructive surgeon who promptly sent me to the cancer surgeon who did a biopsy to confirm what I already knew. It’s back! Of course she doesn’t fill me with confidence either. When I told her that there was no way I was going back to the same oncologist who essentially kicked my can down the road, she assured me she’d find someone else.

So I was all set for surgery. I’d cleared my schedule, my husband had gotten medical leave approved at his job and I’d spent a morning at the hospital getting all the tests done for my pre-operative check. Then, on the morning of the procedure, I got a call from the surgeon telling me I hadn’t gotten my CT and bone scans done.

“No one told me to!” I exclaimed.

“You were scheduled for them on May 15.”

I looked at my appointment book. I’d worked a full day, nothing there about any tests.

“Nobody told me and no one called when I didn’t show up,” I complained. Good Lord! It’s not like I drive to Medical City a couple of times a week and just walk around, knocking on doors to see if anyone wants to perform an exam. If I needed those tests, SOMEONE should have told me.

She hung up to make some calls. My husband promptly had a nervous breakdown and insisted I get with another doctor.

“Look, honey,” I said. “I want this stuff out of me today if possible. I really don’t have time to find another doctor and go through all this again. Let’s just see what she has to say.”

She called back and whom had she been on the phone with? The oncologist! Both of them AND the reconstructive surgeon were of the opinion that I only needed my right implant removed and the other left in.

“That’s not what we decided at our pre-op meeting!” (Which you insisted I have face-to-face and was only two days earlier.) “I want them both out. I’m done with all this!”

“But your bra will fit better if you have at least one implant. Then we can get another one done later.”

“No more implants!” What was she, deaf? “And I couldn’t care less about my bra.”

“But with no breasts, your stomach will look larger.”

“I DON’T CARE!”

“Well, I guess we’ll just go ahead with what we discussed then.” So she DID remember!

Long story short, I had my surgery, I survived. More next week.

Last week I complained about the failures of our institutionalized education system such as turning science into a religion and snuffing out free speech in the name of tolerance (!?!). I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the many talented educators, professional and non-, who give their very best to our children. They stand bravely against the flood of political correctness and serve as outposts of reason and fairness.

We rely on public education way too much and get involved in it way too little. Besides, children get most of their education AWAY from school, watching how their families act and their communities function. That’s where they learn honor, honesty, strength and courage. It’s also where they learn cowardliness, cruelty, pettiness and sloth. Going to some building every day is just a small part of it.

I liked school and got good grades, but I have very few memories from those days. In one the Kindergarten teacher was lining us up. Imagining something I had seen on the Keystone Kops (my Dad loved the old comedies), I shoved the kid behind me hoping the rest would go down like a row of dominos and hilarity would ensue. I ended up in the corner for recess.

By first grade I was somewhat tamed and was able to recite “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by memory for our Christmas pageant. We were allowed to call it Christmas back then. Now you take a chance of being sent to ISS if you even mention Christianity except in the proper context i.e. "brutal, oppressive Christian invaders".

In short, school was just a place I went to be “taught”. I “learned” elsewhere. Sure, I spent a lot of time reading books and committing my flights of fancy to paper, but I also got a practical education in living that could only come from parents who were children in the Great Depression. By the time I was a teen I could cook, sew, wash, garden, perform first aid and wield a hammer, saw and paint brush.

I woke up every day with a clear idea that there was work to be done, even if it was only going to school. In short, I produced. The idea of lounging around and consuming all day was for rich, idle people in penthouses or on tropical beaches. I could never get the hang of just “hanging out”. It was too boring. As I tell my (similarly) socially awkward clients, I prefer interactions that involve an activity. I want to accomplish something.

A key element from the book I mentioned last week (“The Vanishing American Adult” by Ben Sasse) is that we need to nudge our children (and ourselves) away from lives of pure consumption and challenge them to do more. We must put them to the test – of survival, character, resolve and, yes, some book learning. We must go back to creating functioning adults instead of prolonging a wasteful, purposeless childhood into old age.

I’m currently reading a book by Ben Sasse called “The Vanishing American Adult”. Basically it’s about how, despite spending more per student than almost anywhere else in the world, our institutionalized education system continues to churn out high school graduates who can’t decipher the instructions on a package of raman noodles and have no clue about how our country (much less our world) came to be.

And those are the ones who DO graduate, in many places less than 60%. (Thankfully, they can all quote the results of every episode of The Voice.) Yet despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, our politicians continue to insist that all we need is more spending and we will surely get better results. They believe it, so it must be true.

In the psych business we call this “confirmation bias”. Basically it means we tend to only pay attention to things we already believe. I’m certainly guilty. For example, any time I read something about the climate assuring me the science is settled, I quickly skip to the next article. You see, science isn’t a consensus, it’s a method. And according to that method, science is NEVER settled, but always one experiment away from being completely upended.

You can’t get climate change fanatics to hear this, even when faced with the undeniable fallacy of their predictions. According their patron saint (His Holiness Al Gore), the Arctic was supposed to be entirely ice-free two years ago and California was in permanent drought. News flash! There’s still a butt load of ice in the Arctic (ask the crews of the Russian ice-breakers stuck in it) and California is in danger of washing into the ocean. Using the scientific method, the "warmers" would willingly admit that their models were wrong and would alter them. Not happening.

Another example are the tolerant, inclusive college kids who refuse to allow a conservative speaker on their campus even though he was invited by a large group of fellow students anxious to hear him. They protest the proposed “hate speech” by cussing people out, beating them up and setting fire to a Starbucks. That speaker is a fascist, they “reason”, and so ANY means of stopping him is justified, even fascism. They don’t see the hypocrisy because of, you guessed it, confirmation bias.

Luckily I got through the education system before it was completely ruined. I can proudly admit I never took a TAAS test and yet I emerged from high school, went straight into college and full time work (at roughly the same time) and never looked back. That just doesn’t happen much these days, as Mr. Sasse points out so well in his book.

Today our kids come of age knowing how to do only one thing – consume. Food, entertainment, resources. They’re woefully unable to produce, something our ancestors got started when they were still in short pants. As education has lost depth and breadth, it's shrunk into a limited world view which is more religion than reality. More on this next week!

People who’re in business for themselves never really stop working. There’re always irons in the fire, deals in the making, loose ends to tie up. The misperception is that someone who is “his own boss” has the ultimate flexibility to slack off whenever he wants and savor the best of whatever he produces. Wrong.

Farmers, for example, don’t get the pick of the crop. That goes to market. They get the ugly stuff, the bruised tomatoes. Actually, any time I go to the farmer’s market I always ask for the bruised tomatoes (at a discount). They make the best chili. But back to the point, farmers work all the time growing food and then get the rejects for their tables.

Bakers eat the stuff that didn’t rise enough or got a little burnt. Butchers get the “fully-aged” steaks. The cobbler’s kids never have new shoes and the seamstress’s children are always missing buttons. When something is your job, you just look at it differently and the same thing goes for counseling.

When something bad happens in my life, the last thing I want is to be counseled. Even by other counselors. I know I’ll just hear them say all the things I would say, the things I HAVE said over and over, and it will become so clear to me that those things don’t really help very much.

So last week when I found out that my breast cancer was back, I reflexively reached out to all my friends and family with an email blast. Bless, them, they faithfully delivered the sympathy and good wishes I craved. But then I discovered that I really didn’t want to deal with it anymore.

Truth is I’m not sad, I’m not mad, I’m not even scared. What I am is disappointed. I thought I was through with all this stuff. Now I’m beginning to suspect that I’ll never be through with it until it’s through with me and I’m, well, through.

Strange how I started having pity parties before the tests had even been run and well before the results were known. (ESP?) Now that everyone knows, I just want to pretend like it isn’t happening. Maybe that’s because this time around I have a much better idea of what’s going to go down. And I’ve got to tell you, I don’t like it! One bit!

Shivering under a thin sheet in a frigid surgery suite waiting for that shot of oblivion. Waking up sick with oozing incisions and familiar parts missing. Struggling to stand and walk. Fighting the pain, the boredom. Measuring and recording fluids that seep out of various tubes. Lying still while poison drips through my veins. Watching all my hair fall out.

Not this again! People want to know what they can do, how they can help. It’s pretty simple. All I want is to know you’re there, to know you care. I don’t want to talk about it. Too much like work.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a wonderful organization that has lifted thousands of people from lives ruined by addiction into healthy sobriety. Still, I have a beef with them. That’s their prejudice against having a good, old-fashioned Pity Party. For those of you lucky enough to have never thrown one, a pity party is when you mope around feeling sorry for yourself and blaming everyone else, even dumb luck, for your woes.

Now why would I, a mental health professional, stand up in favor of this (arguably) unhealthy activity? Because sometimes it’s just what the doctor ordered! It has to do with how we view and deal with our emotions, a counselor’s stock and trade.

Starting in early childhood, we are taught that some emotions are “good” and “acceptable” and some aren’t. For example, we are told to “cheer up”, “be thankful”, “get over it”. Emotions like happiness, gratitude, love and empathy are encouraged, even demanded by parents the world over.

In contrast, emotions like anger, fear and sadness are shunned. The minute they raise their ugly heads, we are told to stop feeling them. We are even threatened with more pain if we don’t cease and desist. (I’LL give you something to cry about!) Sound familiar?

I believe that ALL emotions are “good” and “acceptable” in that they all deserve attention and respect. As I say (over and over) in my sessions, “Feelings are never right or wrong. They simply are. And the more you try to deny them, the stronger they become.” But that doesn’t stop people from trying to stuff them into some deep, dark hole, hoping they’ll never resurface.

Problem is, they always do. Sometimes at the worst possible moments. A typical example is a child who was physically, emotionally and/or sexually abused by a parent. As an adult, he’s adopted a survivor mentality which necessitates forgetting about the past and concentrating on the future. He may even have bought into the idea that he must forgive in order to be free of the past.

If only it were that easy. Those stuffed emotions don’t go anywhere. They swirl around in the unconscious, gaining in toxicity and poisoning the present in ways that are sometimes hard to grasp. For example, anyone who suffers from anxiety attacks is reacting to past trauma that has never been dealt with. The same thing holds true for people with explosive anger.

So wadayado? Well, you have to bring that past trauma into consciousness and work through it. Preferably with someone like me, a Licensed Professional Counselor. And one of the best ways to re-experience your pain, anger and sorrow is with that Pity Party. Cry for the child you were. Rage at that parent who betrayed you. Let it all out.

Like a violent storm, it will pass and pretty soon, sunshine will break through in your life again. Me, I like to mope on the couch, eat chocolate and binge watch Forensic Files. Works like a charm!

I consider myself a very private person. People I know would be surprised to hear that. They’d probably laugh in your face, and who could blame them? After all, I publish the most intimate details of my life in the newspaper (for God’s sake!). And the friends and family (who haven’t blocked me yet) get another heaping helping of my inner process when they read my painful attempts at romance fiction.

I’m constantly being told (especially by my kids) that I should “dial it back”. People are “concerned” for my reputation. They worry what “others” might think. They’re “embarrassed” for me. They think I give a flip. They forget that I have absolutely no shame. Even though I AM a very private person. You see, there’s a difference between being shameless and being outgoing.

For example, I have no problem reading in front of the congregation (beyond the amusing effects of my nearly-terminal dyslexia) but I just can’t commit to joining the women’s group. Or put another way, I have a hard time letting people in, but I have no problem stripping to the waist in front of them. Maybe that’s because I do it so often these days.

Truthfully it started when I was young. I was a sickly child who had several life-threatening surgeries before the age of 11. I was naked in front of rooms full of medical staff more often than most children my age. Many of whom never had to pee in bedpan. I got used to being poked and weighed and to having all my vital statistics announced and analyzed.

It only got worse when I had my sons. Childbirth is an undignified business. It’s truly amazing just how many different substances can spew from your body in a 24 hour period, all to be weighed and analyzed. There’s no point in playing coy. After a while you get numb to the parade of medical professionals messing around between your legs.

Then there was the breast cancer thing. Just when I thought I might go a few years without needing an IV drip, throwing up on someone or having a catheter inserted. Or removed. And don’t get me started on all the before-and-after photos the plastic surgeon took. They’re floating around somewhere in my “electronic medical record” waiting to pounce.

But if someone did see them, I wouldn’t die of embarrassment. I’d just empathize with his discomfort and assure him that my earlier work was better. You see, that’s just my body. It is what it is. Oh sure, I try to get some exercise, eat some vegetables and stay on this side of obese on that dratted BMI scale. I’ve even been known to style my hair and wear new(er) clothes from time to time, but that’s the extent of it.

I learned early that my body is fragile and unreliable. Like dust. What’s amazing is that it holds together as well as it does. What it holds is who we are. Which is confidential.

I subscribe to a bunch of magazines and newsletters which I prefer to get in their paper versions. (Makes it easier to take them into the tub. But don’t worry. I recycle.) Most of these end up on the coffee table in my waiting room and are evidence of my very wide range of interests. Those specifically devoted to counseling are a diverse lot.

Psychology Today is aimed at the general public. Its cover articles almost always deal with sex, or some currently “sexy” issue, like narcissism. It’s packed full of the kind of stuff people click on when surfing the net. Quick takes, heavy on interpretation and light on research. This one I leave in the waiting room where it’s regularly swiped along with Entertainment Weekly. (For some reason, Archaeology Review stays put.)

My favorite is Psychotherapy Networker. Clear and insightful writing makes it a joy to read. And it covers a wide range of issues I find myself actually dealing with on a day to day basis. This one stays on my bedside table the longest. This one I keep and refer to later.

The worse of the bunch is Counseling Today. Most of its articles read like senior essays and almost all are aimed at counseling students or school counselors. There are a couple of recurring items I enjoy on private practice and risk management. Other than that, it’s alternately boring or infuriating. It quickly ends up in the recycle box.

In addition, it’s obsessed with the LGBT(QI+) community. Lay out the issues side by side for the last five years and I doubt they go more than three months without this subject being the cover story. Seeing as LGBTs make up only 3% of the population, this can only be seen as blatant bias on the part of the editor.

I have, and have always had, LGBT clients. In general, their problems have very little to do with their sexuality. They come in with the same issues all my clients do – relationship conflicts, parenting challenges, anxiety, depression. They might talk about being bullied in school, but they’re just as likely to fondly recall their first high school sweetheart, the one who cemented their sexual identity.

Being habitually skeptical, I question the motives of those purporting to defend these individuals from “persecution”. I wonder if they have not simply raised up another victimized minority in order to cash in on grant money and the proceeds from “sensitivity trainings” for corporations terrified of lawsuits. I don’t see how labeling someone a victim helps him.

With every issue I’m tempted to write a letter to the editor, but I don’t want to appear “insensitive”. Sadly, I’ve allowed myself to be cowed by the PC crowd on this subject. Just like the women in the restroom at Disneyland who were afraid to say anything when a big, hairy-chested man walked in and just stood there, watching them. Has it really come to this?

I’m jealous of my older brother for several things, none of which include his being older. Mostly I resent the fact that he knew, seemingly from birth, what he wanted to do with his life (become a physicist) while I floundered around for years trying to get a clue. I remember one day, when we were both still teenagers, asking him the point of studying physics.

“So we can figure out what holds the universe together,” he replied.

“That’s easy,” I quipped. “Gravity.”

“But what’s gravity?”

“Who cares as long as it works?”

Clearly, I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now. But I have as an excuse a nearly terminal case of dyslexia. As I’m sure you’ve gleaned from multiple internet postings, you can turn letters around and upside down and even reflect them in a mirror and still make sense of them. The same thing doesn’t work for numbers. Unable to do the math, I didn’t follow my brother into the Sciences, but instead studied the Arts.

The other day I was lying in the bath reading about black holes and realized that they’re merely gravity taken to a ridiculous extreme. Everything is sucked in and disappears. Where does it all go? To another universe, or just to another place in this universe? Then it occurred to me that the book in my hands was something like a black hole.

Words written years ago, by someone who may now be dead, were being sucked into my mind, as if from another universe. Then I wondered when I even THINK about the past, do I create a sort of gravity that draws information into the present? When people talk to each other, do they make temporary worm holes (if you will) between one mind and another?

This could explain all that paranormal stuff that never seems to make it onto the recording. Everyone has a story of a time they just knew something terrible was happening and a phone call confirmed the horrible truth. Of course the skeptics point out that we only remember the times when it worked and forget the (possibly thousands) of times we were dead wrong.

Still something must be going on. Studies have shown that we “see” things before the information actually gets to our brains. A theory holds that this is a basis of what we call intuition, or gut feelings. Some scientists even think we have a second brain in our guts that communicates with our other brain without us ever being aware of it.

Psychologists have postulated different levels of consciousness since the field began. What if all those different layers actually existed in separate universes and were drawing information back and forth across the void by virtue of mighty gravity? What if there IS a “cultural memory” from our distant ancestors that we can access?

What if…. But by then the bath had gone cold and it was time to get dressed and get going.

When I went to college the first time (back in the good ol’ Paleolithic) I took a bunch of courses in education. Which is fortunate because I’m constantly having to teach my husband a thing or two. I swear it’s like having a kid around. All day it’s “Why?”, “Why?”, “Why?” Occasionally prefaced with “I don’t understand….”

I have to answer him or he just keeps at it. (Of course when I ask “Why won’t you wear your hearing aids?” all I get is a scowl.) No matter what I say, it leads to more questions. In exasperation, I point him to the internet, but he’d much rather hear it from me. Which begs the question, if he wants my opinion so badly, why does he so rarely follow it? But I digress.

This being Holy Week, many of his (incessant) questions revolved around Jesus and Christianity in general. One of his favorite inquiries runs thus. “If God wanted us to know His will, why didn’t He just write it down for us?” I counter that He did that with Moses, but the lettering was barely etched in stone before the Israelites were back to worshipping a calf.

“Then why didn’t Jesus write a book?”

“We don’t know that He didn’t,” I answer. But my favorite explanation (which is pure conjecture, I admit) is that Jesus didn’t write a book because He didn’t want anyone to be able to say “This is the one, true book of Jesus!” because pretty soon everyone would be making the same claim. If He never wrote a book, then no one could profess to own it. Or know exactly what it said.

That, of course, leads to more questions. “Why didn’t Jesus just make the Pharisees see the truth? If He could bring people back to life, surely He could do THAT! Then He wouldn’t have had to die.”

“He didn’t want to FORCE people to believe in Him. He wanted them to do it on their own. And He HAD to die because He was the Lamb of God. The sacrifice. The sin offering.”

That leads to a long, circuitous conversation about Judaic law and free will and before I know it we’re right back to Eden and the knowledge of good and evil. The other day I found myself screaming that if Satan (in the form of a serpent) had tempted an ant to eat of the fruit, that ant would’ve had a conscience and become a moral being.

My husband’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Look,” I said much more calmly. “Jesus didn’t come as a conquering king riding a noble steed, He came as a servant on a donkey. That’s why He washed His disciple’s feet. That’s why He allowed Himself to be crucified. His message was service, sacrifice, love.”

I’ve written before about the hypocrisy of our nation when it comes to drug use. On the one hand, we label it a moral failing and a scourge. One the other hand, we push drugs like nobody’s business. Most magazines contain many multi-page ads for cholesterol pills or anti-depressants. TV shows are filled with commercials touting fixes for our high blood sugar and low libido.

Now we have an “epidemic” of opioid abuse. Most of these addicts began their journeys with a life-threatening accident or surgery. Their doctors gave them medications to ease their pain, and when the pain didn’t let up, they took more and more. They went from doctor shopping, to robbing people’s medicine cabinets to finally buying drugs on the streets.

But they aren’t really “on the streets”. There’s a highly organized network of buyers and sellers who all know just when the next prescription is scheduled to drop. Those medications have been resold long before the pharmacist finishes counting them out. There’re even waiting lists and bidding wars.

So how did something that does so much good turn so many people into addicts? Well, it has a lot to do with the mechanics of addiction. Seems our human brains are especially good at forming the connections that make us crave certain activities and substances. And it turns out that anything can be addictive. (Like exercising or coffee.)

As I deal with clients who are caught up in the throes of recovery, I often thank God that I don’t have what they call “an addictive personality”. The closest I came was when I was fighting cancer and had what was termed “a bad outcome” from my breast reconstruction surgery.

I’ve always been someone who had a high threshold for pain, but this was like nothing I had ever encountered (and I’ve had two babies, the “natural” way!) Suddenly I found myself counting the hours until I could have my next pill. And the moment the second hand hit 12, I was pushing that button for the nurse.

I cried when the doctor wanted to discharge me because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control the pain at home. But gradually, as I got better, I stopped watching the clock and, eventually, simply forgot to take the pills. Others have no such luck and begin the slide into addiction.

Now there’s talk about the benefits of medicinal marijuana for the management of opioid addiction. All I can say is, “About time.” Our government, in its “wisdom” classifies pot as more dangerous than cocaine or heroin. This has a chilling effect on the researchers who want to test pot as a treatment for many disorders.

Now that the ban is beginning to lift, it seems that marijuana can be very effective for things as various as pain management, addiction, seizures and anxiety. And they say it isn’t “physically” addictive. But then neither is chocolate, and I truly can’t imagine my life without it!

In my office I have groups of family figurines in four flavors – Asian, Black, Hispanic and White. When writing this I gave a lot of thought as to the order I was going to list those races lest I seem, well, racist. I finally decided that the fairest way was to simply put them in alphabetical order.

My original list was Black, White, Hispanic and Asian. Black and White first because I’m used to that phrase, as in black and white thinking or black and white TV. Next I added Hispanic because they make up over a third of the population here in Texas. And then, almost as an afterthought, I listed Asian. Though there are more Asian people in the world than any other “race”, I rarely encounter one so they came in last.

My listing reflects nearly 60 years of negotiating racial politics. The kids I see, however, have no such limitations. They happily select dolls based on factors that have nothing to do with race. They always group them into families, however, a family being, at least, a momma and her babies. Sometimes daddy joins the group and, occasionally, grandma or grandpa. What matters most is the sex of the dolls, not their race.

One boy spent a lot of time selecting dolls and setting them up on the table. When he was through, he happily announced that he had created a family. It was the epitome of diversity. When I asked him why those dolls were a family, he didn’t hesitate for a minute and answered, “Because they all have red shirts.” A fact, I must admit, I hadn’t even noticed.

It didn’t matter to him that the pale, yellow-haired mommy was watching over a black baby and a Hispanic toddler. Or that daddy was an elderly Asian man with graying temples. They all had red shirts and so that meant they belonged together. If you ever wonder whether racism is learned or innate, there’s your answer. It’s definitely taught.

I also have two baby dolls who have no sexual characteristics at all. One has brown skin and a blue onesie. The other is white and wears a pink onesie. To the kids, the doll in blue is the boy and the doll in pink is the girl. And they make their selections based solely on that criteria no matter what race they may belong to.

Somewhere around the age of 10 everything changes. Suddenly, race matters. I’d love to know just how that comes about. Do their parents patiently instruct them on the differences, or do they pick it up in school? At some point, ugly names start being attached to a particular race. And by the time they’re teenagers, they’re officially prejudiced. Many are being bullied because of their race.

And so it begins. They start by being oblivious to skin color or eye shape. All too soon it becomes the only thing that matters. So much for “maturity”.

Before they started spending every waking moment glued to a screen, kids used to play outside. In fact our parents insisted on it. Some unlucky kids even had mothers who would lock the door behind them. My parents never went that far, but I do remember being told repeatedly to vacate the premises.

And play we did. From the minute we got home from school until dinner time all the neighborhood kids were outside. (Back then you didn’t start getting homework until you were in junior high.)

Now that I’m counseling kids, I notice that a lot of their problems stem from the fact that they never play anything but video games, inside and alone. So some of what I’m really doing in “play therapy” is exactly the kind of stuff we used to do outside all those years ago. I’ve come up with a list of four classic kid games.

First, there’s “chase”. I play this one with my granddaughters. At some point I announce that “I’m comin’ to getcha!” and they run off, squealing with delight. I search for them (purposely ignoring their wiggles and giggles) then haul them back into the living room where I “capture” them with pillows. Of course they soon “escape” and run away again. They’ll do this until I’m too exhausted to play anymore. A common variation of “chase” is “tag” which we used to play all the time.

Second there’s “hide and seek”. I played a variation of this game with my sons where I did the hiding. At some point they’d open a door or peer under a blanket and discover “Monster Mom”, a demon who would chase them back to “base” which was usually the couch. Then it would start all over and go on, again, until I was too exhausted to continue.

I was the best hide and seek player ever because I was exceptionally small and light. I could climb into the very tree tops, invisible from the ground. Once I crouched under the overhanging leaves of some day lilies until the “seeker” gave up and called me out. I’ll never forget the shock on his face when I seemed to appear right out of the ground!

Third there’s “house” or “fort”. You simply string up some sheets, prop up some sofa cushions and hunker down. Once my younger son had the entire block in our back yard because he found some old curtains and wove them between our bushes. It lasted for hours.

Finally, there’s “war”. There are endless variations of this game: “cops and robbers”, “cowboys and… Native Americans”, “spacemen and aliens”. You team up and engage in a pretend battle with gruesome death scenes and selfless acts of courage. Today’s parents would never allow this, but in the play room it’s called “aggression release” and it’s a vital part of the work.

Hmmm. I wonder how many kids would really need therapy if they could just play outside all the time again.

People in America used to be a lot thinner. I like to look at old pictures and movies. Even in the street scenes you rarely see a woman wearing more than a size 5. (I can only assume that 11-inch waists were the norm.) Old TV shows reveal the same thing. The “fat guy” role could now be played by any average American in line at WalMart.

On a more personal level, I look at old pictures of my family and realize that we didn’t share an ounce of fat between us. And we were solidly middleclass citizens who enjoyed three square meals a day. Now I eat one meal a day and it’s a constant struggle to keep my weight below “obese” on that dratted BMI chart. What happened?

Well, back then I used to walk a lot. I thought nothing of walking two miles (one way) to hang out with a friend. I also rode my bike and ten or twenty miles wasn’t too far for me. Then I went off to college and regularly lugged twenty or thirty pounds of books up and down the “Hill” at KU. Now I’d have them all loaded on a “notebook” that would weigh less than my lunch and I’d be walking no further than my computer to attend class.

Huge portions, high-fructose corn syrup, sedentary lifestyles, fat genes. Pick a reason. We’re all just heavier than ever. That’s why I was so happy to read about the Egyptologists working on newly discovered batches of mummies. Seems that photo-shopping is nothing new.

We’ve all seen the hieroglyphic panels showing slender-waisted queens performing sacrifices and six-pack toting kings battering their enemies with clubs. That’s the official story chiseled on the monument. But mummified remains don’t lie. And from what I’ve seen, some of those royals could have been buried in piano crates, if they’d had pianos back then.

Seems the Egyptian elite were saggy and in poor health. They had clogged arteries, arthritic knees, double chins. Just like us, they spent a lot of time sitting around and eating. I imagine that after a hard day of accepting tribute, passing judgement, reading entrails and checking on the progress of your latest statue, the average god-king liked to just kick back with a few friends, have a brew and consume an entire roasted crocodile.

But even then, they knew they were fat. So woe betide the artist who portrayed them in all their corpulent glory. In their portraits they are always young and taut. Some art historians try to tell us that was just the “style”, that the art was more “symbolic” and the figures were “architypes” not meant to be seen as realistic.

Bull hockey! You conquer a bunch of nations, haul back loads of booty, wield the power of life and death over an entire river valley AND speak with the gods? You’re simply not going to let some two-scarab scribe paint you with a beer belly!

Lots of people take lots of abuse because they’re afraid to stand up for themselves. I see this constantly in my practice. A parent, sibling, boss or even child will consistently display rude, insensitive and insulting behaviors which my clients feel helpless to rebuke. Usually there’s some sort of emotional blackmail going on.

For example, parents of adult children use the (alleged) inheritance as leverage to boss everyone around thus making the siblings compete for favor. Adult children also frequently use the grandchildren as leverage to make the parents obey. I hope to never again hear the phrase “She won’t let me see my grandkids!” wailed in my office. But I will.

And, of course, bosses are, at best, trying to get as much work as they can for as little pay as they can get away with. At worst, they are using their employees as guinea pigs on which to work out their own deep-seated emotional problems. Bullies never grow out of it. They just get jobs at the DMV.

Then there are the more public protesters. I’ve already made my views clear on when actors use getting an award as a platform to air grievances. (Though I’m tickled that Hollywood consistently makes a mess out of their biggest awards show of the year. And they supposedly know so much?)

So I’m always impressed when ordinary folks get together to protest something, basically because I’m too lazy to do it. I just write checks (and columns.) When I see news reports of people marching against social injustice on the streets of downtown Dallas, I'm never tempted to join in. What I think is “Where would I park?” and “Where would I find a restroom?”

What I NEVER think is, “A good way to protest this injustice would be to turn over a police car and set fire to a Starbucks.” It takes a professional rabble-rouser to come up with those techniques. And he would have answered my above questions by bringing me there on a bus and arranging for Port-A-Pottys.

The first lesson for everyone to learn is that you can’t change people’s behaviors. You might be able to influence them, but you can’t change them. You only control yourself. It can be scary, but the best way to deal with emotional blackmail is to call the offender’s bluff.

“Okay, write me out of the will. I’ll truly enjoy watching my meth-head brother blow through all the wealth you spent your entire lives amassing in less than a year. What a legacy!”

“Okay, don’t let me see my grandchildren. I’ll just save up all the money I was going to spend on their birthday and Christmas presents and treat myself to a spa vacation, since you won’t be counting on me to babysit anymore.”

What you don’t do is just take it. At least let the offenders know that what they’re saying or doing is hurtful and you don’t like it. Then ignore them or get another job.

As I’ve noted before, being a counselor in private practice is a lonely position. You rarely have anyone to talk to besides your clients. And, as busy as I am, it’s a special treat for me to even get lunch, much less share it with another practitioner. That’s why I usually jump at the chance to rub elbows with my colleagues.

Of course every time that happens, several things become painfully clear. 1) I’m old. 2) I need a haircut. 3) My clothes are five years out of date. (Okay, 10 years.) 4) I’m the only person in the D/FW area who wears earmuffs. Surrounded by a bunch of bouncy, fashionably-dressed 30-somethings gushing about “mindfulness” and “life coaching” I look like I’m only there to refill the water glasses.

The other day it occurred to me that I’m the Columbo of counselors. For those of you not as old as me, Columbo was a TV show from the 70s starring the wonderful character actor Peter Falk, may he rest in peace.

One of my favorite memories of childhood is watching TV with my dad. It began when I was six or seven and we would watch Alfred Hitchcock Presents on our tiny black-and-white TV. We progressed to watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show, MASH and both Bob Newhart comedies. But Columbo has a special place in our hearts.

He was a detective for the LAPD investigating crimes committed by the rich and famous. He would pull up to the mansion in a wheezing, primer-splotched 1959 Peugeot. He wore a baggy, stained trench coat, scuffed shoes, a loosened tie and a rumpled shirt that looked like it had never seen the inside of a dry cleaner’s.

When presenting himself at the door, a sneering maid or butler would direct him to the servant’s entrance in back. The mansion owners would display a similar expression of distaste. But, of course, they had to cooperate with the police in order to play the role of innocent victims, so they would welcome him in and patiently relate their well-rehearsed stories.

One of Columbo’s favorite ploys was to show up unannounced at some sparkling gala or country club banquet to go over “a few facts concerning the case” thus thoroughly embarrassing his suspects. And just when they thought they were finally rid of him, he would do an abrupt about-face to ask about “just one more thing” which would invariably punch a huge, gaping hole in their alibis.

Columbo always solved the crime because he was just wickedly smart and also because people underestimated him. They dismissed him as harmless, even pitiful and thus let their guards down. That’s me. I don’t want my clients to be so intimidated by my appearance and psycho-babble that they don’t feel comfortable opening up about their problems. How else can we work together?

And I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t been working in balmy LA, Columbo would have worn earmuffs, too.

Psychology has always straddled an uncomfortable position somewhere between the “hard sciences” and the “liberal arts”.

On the science side, as much as the brain imagers try, they still haven’t been able to pin down an area of the brain responsible for any given thought pattern. And as hard as the gene splicers try, they still haven’t isolated a “depression gene”. (Despite what you might have read in the popular press.) None of the “scientific” studies are ever conclusive and just seem to raise more questions than they answer.

On the arts side, most of the psychological theories proposed over the years seem to have more to do with the personality of the individual therapist than with any real techniques. Once the “great man (or woman)” has passed on, other practitioners have a hard time carrying on the work. They invariably come up with a “new” theory based on THEIR personalities.

One of the biggest complaints I hear about other counselors is that they “just sat there and didn’t say anything”. Or, worse, “spent the whole time typing into the computer”. Believe it or not, there are theories that stipulate that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do. It’s a holdover from Freud’s “free association”. You let the client ramble and just add in a little “hmmm” or “tell me more about that” from time to time. Gradually they catch on.

On the other hand, I also get an earful about how the last counselor “just talked about herself and her problems” the entire time. This is known in the business as “self-disclosure” and it’s either the best or the worst thing you can possibly do, depending upon whom you ask.

Of course, the insurance companies demand “evidence-based interventions” which essentially means you walk your clients through a series of exercises and send them off with homework every week, despite the fact that nobody completes it. Then they hit you up with the greatest dodge ever concocted to deny more services:

If your client is getting better, he doesn’t need you anymore. And if he isn’t getting better, you aren’t helping and he doesn’t need you anymore. What’s a counselor to do?!

Well, as has been proven time and time again, no theory or treatment is really any better than the others. What does matter is a little thing we call “the therapeutic relationship”. In other words, how well do you and your counselor get along? Not just do you like him or her, but are you feeling better? There’s only one way to find out. Ask.

Inexperienced therapists invariably get frustrated when a client isn’t “making progress”. But it’s incredibly difficult to alter lifelong behavior patterns and multi-generational family dysfunction. Change is measured out in teaspoons, not bucketsful, and relapse is the rule rather than the exception.

But I believe in talk therapy. I see people get better every day. So I really don’t care how it works, just as long as it does.

The paradox of "children’s counseling” is that the ones I end up working with the most are their parents. This should come as no surprise because the bulk of counseling is teaching effective communication, whether with a single person trying to do better at work, a couple trying to stave off divorce, or a family caught up in the heck that is CPS and court-mandated therapy.

I face every call from CPS with a mixture of grief and relief. Grief that yet another family is enduring so much trauma. Relief that they’re going to be REALLY motivated to show up and the State is picking up the tab. Of course, that first appointment is always tough. Everyone’s upset, most of them don’t want to be there, and no one really believes I’ll be able to help. So the first thing I have to do is determine what’s going on. In the psych trade we use the term “the identified patient”. Families generally agree on just who “the problem” is, but, in another paradox, that person is usually not causing the upheaval. He’s just the one who’s reacting the most. He’s like the wet spot on your ceiling. You know there’s a leak somewhere on the roof, but exactly where is anyone’s guess. Just patch the ceiling and another drip will show up somewhere else.

Thus begins the slow and painful process of convincing people to let go of their old patterns of behavior and try something new. An example is parents who set ironclad rules (usually based on their own childhood experiences) and accept no variation based on the ages or circumstances of their children. Worse than that is parents who set rules which are only occasionally enforced.

I chuckle when I hear parents count. “Heathcliffe! Get over here now!” Heathcliffe knows that “now” can mean any time from “right this minute” to “never”, so he doesn’t move an inch. Parent starts counting. “One! Two! Heathcliffe you get over here now! Three! Four!.” I watch the child’s face as he gauges from his parent’s expression and tone what the magic number is this time.

In contrast, I tell parents to forget the counting. You give the kid one. “If you choose not to come over here right now, you choose to have no TV (or video game or ice cream) tonight.” Then for heaven’s sake stick to it! You only have to enforce the rule a few times before the kids learn you’re not messing around. You don’t have to yell or get mad. You just tell them how it’s going to be.

Ironically, children with firm, fair boundaries are happier and less anxious than the ones who get away with murder. Being the center of attention all the time is stressful. Never knowing when Mommy’s finally going to go ballistic is scary. Understanding the rules, and that they WILL be enforced, frees kids up to do what they do best – play, explore and have fun.

This is a possible answer to the question, “What happens when you drain the swamp?” Once the dark waters are siphoned off and the career politicians and all their lobbyists are sent home to look for real jobs, what’s left is a huge, soggy mass of red tape like the algal blooms that blow up periodically and suffocate every living thing.

With all the changes in the insurance industry, I’m getting to be an expert on red tape. It’s a truly remarkable substance capable of expanding a few keystrokes worth of data collection into a year-long ordeal of incompetence, generating reams of paper and uncounted hours of telephone time.

Case in point. Last April I started on the process of becoming a provider for a (government) health plan which shall remain nameless. I sent in the requisite forms and waited. And waited. Every phone call I made was 30 minutes of a recorded voice telling me how valuable my call was and that someone would be with me shortly. That someone invariably told me they had never heard of me and to send in more paperwork.

After several months someone actually looked at my paperwork and told me I had to go through “credentialing”. I asked how long that would take. Between three and six months. Now mind you, I’ve been a provider for a lot of insurance companies for almost ten years. And I’m part of an online credentialing service that checks all my references and licenses so other people don’t have to. Exactly what was going to take half a year to verify?

I gave up and wrote them off. The client I was trying to get approved for found someone else and I was pretty busy already. Then last week I got an encouraging fax asking me to re-date and initial a couple of pages of a contract and re-submit my service address. The same address I’ve had for over three years and was on all the piles of paperwork I had already sent in. No matter. I eagerly complied and faxed it off.

The next day I got an exasperated call from someone at the company telling me I had neglected to put my phone and fax number on the paper and that I needed to fax it in again. The tone of the voice mail suggested I was a complete idiot wasting their valuable time. I called back and left the following message.

“I got your call and I’m pretty confused as I’ve sent you this information half a dozen times and it hasn’t changed. The phone number is the one you called to leave your message, and the fax number is the one you faxed the documents to, so you obviously already know what they are. None the less, I will send you this information, again, when I get back to my office on Monday.”

Tell me again how national health is going to make everything so much better?

Lots of sad faces out there as of late. Winter blues, post-Christmas financial strain, election overload and just the accumulation of everyday stressors are turning our country into a cabin full of unhappy campers. I have to admit, I’ve been one of them. Fall-out from the end of NorthStar has impacted many of my clients leaving them, and my business, in the lurch. So after moping around for a few weeks, I decided to take action.

First order of business, turn off the TV. It’s amazing how a technology capable of bringing so many of us so much entertainment can end up making us so very unhappy and unhealthy. While an occasional session of binge-watching Snapped and Forensic Files might be okay, once it became a weekend staple, my mood began to slip and my waistline increase. Time to get off the couch.

Second order of business, turn off the computer. My kids already guilted me into getting off FaceBook and, for the most part, I haven’t missed it. But I still spend too much time reading internet news which is, at best, biased and possibly totally fake. (I’ve sort of given up trying to tell which.) I want to be informed, but I fail to see how it’s helping. It just polarizes everyone, getting us all upset about things we really have no control over.

Finally, spend more time outside. Whenever I do, I am amazed at the beauty and complexity of the world. And how it continues to slog along, day after day, without any help from anyone. There’s my pond which is finally full of water and wriggling with new life. There are the beautiful sunrises and sunsets that color the sky, and the antics of birds and animals going about the business of living.

I remember a documentary from years ago about birdwatching where they recorded bird songs in a field just miles from some military conflict. The commentator noted that the birds couldn't have cared less what we humans were doing. Despite the fact that our world was in a major tail spin, they were hopefully calling out for mates and building nests.

And I remember what Jesus said when his disciples were worried about dinner and staying warm overnight. If God makes sure the birds of the air have food and clothes the lilies of the field in gorgeous robes, how much more will he do for us? Sometimes you just have to let go and let God do his thing.

Not that I’m leaving it all to the Big Guy. I’m still going to fight insurance companies and try to find services for my displaced clients, but once I put down the phone, send off the fax or reply to the email, I’m going to stop worrying about it for the day. I have more important things to do, like being fully there for my clients during their challenges. And maybe, just maybe we CAN all just get along.

For Christmas, my husband spent $69.95 to have an Ancestry.com test kit sent my way. I provided the requisite amount of spit and waited. Meanwhile, the website deluged me with offers to trace my family and download old documents. So far I haven’t bitten, but we shall see. Then, I finally got notification that my results were ready.

I know from research done by other family members that we mostly come from England and Germany. But I had still hoped for some surprises. Maybe a little American Indian, Pacific Islander, or even Neanderthal made it into the mix? After all, there’s the official family story and then there’s what REALLY happened. (And DNA don’t lie!)

Anxiously I opened the link and soon realized that I have the most boring DNA in the world. It is 73% Great Britain, 20% Western Europe, and 7% other European. So basically, if you put your finger right on top of the English Channel on any globe, you’ve designated the approximate spot my ancestors have occupied since the last ice age.

Hopes of discovering royalty, intrepid explorers or even colorful rogues vanished the instant I saw that pie chart nearly filled with Great Britain. Now I wonder why I should even bother to get any of the other stuff. I can already tell you what it is. Generation after generation of bookish teachers and preachers sitting in the same place.

Of course, some of my ancestors had enough travel itch to come to America, but after that they pretty much stayed put. No heading off into the wilderness with a rucksack full of dried meat and trinkets for the natives. MY ancestors were more likely to wait until a rail line had been put through which could accommodate the hundreds of pounds of books we simply can’t face life without.

I know from recent family history that we had a few factory workers and even dirt famers in our lineage. But my people could never stay there long. Once given the opportunity, they headed off for the nearest college town where they preached or taught classes and collected books until they shuffled off this mortal coil.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being British. That little island dominated most of the known world a few centuries back. But once the daring ship captains had mapped the unknown and the tenacious merchants had set up outposts. Once the roads had been scraped out and some buildings erected, then and only then were people like my ancestors liable to show up (toting a load of books).

But couldn’t at least SOME of my family shown up in Hawai’i? Or Africa. Or the East Indies? No such luck! We went right from stagnating in the British Isles to stagnating in the USA. Here we became careful, cerebral citizens who didn’t make waves and only rarely reproduced. (My family reunion wouldn’t fill an average living room!) So sorry, Ancestry.com, I don’t think I’ll require any further services.

I hate it when performers step into the realm of politics. And I really hate it when they put on huge galas where they get all dressed up and give each other awards and then, instead of just being grateful to receive recognition for having what amounts to a pretty great job, they use the occasion to blast people they disagree with. (I’m talking to YOU Meryl!)

Now there’ve been a few performers who successfully made the transition to politician. Reagan and Schwarzenegger come to mind. But Arnold wasn’t ever really an “actor”. He came up through body-building competitions and pretty much always plays the same strong man character. And Ronald was just an extraordinarily decent and hard-working patriot who got into public office to actually SERVE the American people.

Contrast this to today’s crop of whiners. Anyone who hasn’t already seen it should watch the movie “Hail Caesar” for an idea of what entitlement and isolation can do to a person of (possibly less than) average intelligence, who just happens to be a big star. It’s pretty easy to decide how the masses should act when you’re safely ensconced behind the velvet rope.

You can jump into your private jet and swig champagne while burning up a bunch of fossil fuels to go protest the burning of fossil fuels in a country where most of the population still heats their meals with cow dung. Then you hop back on the jet confident that you’ve used your “platform” to improve the world.

“Scuse me, but you don’t have a “platform”. You only have the eyes and ears of the world because you ENTERTAIN us. Once you stop doing that, you’re nothing. All you really know how to do is act like someone else. And weren’t you supposed to be leaving the country in protest? (Maybe after the Oscars.)

Now I know that acting isn’t an easy job. But it also isn’t a normal job. These Hollywood elites are so far removed from the nine-to-five world that they have to take time off to study working people just to be able to play one in a movie. Then it’s off to the next role and the next awards show while their “adoring public” are still slogging through, paycheck to paycheck.

And then, every chance they get, they berate us little people for not buying into the utopian dream society they feel we would have it we just start being more tolerant and global. And if we could only make the rich pay more. (Hint to the A-List: You ARE the rich, and your studio heads are the ultra-rich!)

It is the ultimate hypocrisy. For example, they berate us for wanting a wall to protect us from the wholesale invasion of crime and poverty from south of the border, but they have no problem building walls around their compounds to keep out undesirables. In the end, all they do is talk the talk. (Or read the script.)

Now that I’m counseling more children, I’ve become more convinced that personality is established very early in our development. Kids just seem to come into the world with a temperament that changes very little throughout the lifetime. And as every parent is painfully aware, you never know what you’re going to get.

We do our best to provide our kids with what they need in the way of physical and emotional support. We try to impart our values and knowledge. We guide and advise. But what we get for all our effort is basically a toss-up. Every day I see people who grew up in horrible dysfunction but somehow rose above it. I see others who came from secure, nurturing homes who just can’t seem to do right. I think it comes down to a basic division between workers and sliders.

The workers seem to instinctively understand that they need to take responsibility for their own lives. They finish school, get jobs, save money and, in general, get along. The sliders, in contrast, look for others to care for them. They’re constantly in need of rescue in the form of money, housing, transportation and emotional support. While the workers move up, there is really only one way to slide. Downhill.

You can try your hardest, but there just doesn’t seem to be any way to convince a slider to get to work. He (or she) might get serious for a while, but soon enough he’s out of a job and looking for help. For reasons that are never HIS fault, he always needs another chance, a leg up, a fresh start. But no matter how many times you provide it, it never sticks. Soon he’s back with another story and his hand out.

So what do you do when you end up with a slider? You learn to say, “No”. And when you’re saying that to someone you really love, like your own child, it can be heart-breaking. You turn him down, he walks away, and you worry yourself sick. You obsess and second-guess. You feel like the worst parent ever.

But the worst thing you can do is give in. It’s like when your toddler throws a temper tantrum. If you eventually give him what he wants, you’ve just taught him that all he has to do is yell long enough and you’ll fold like a house of cards. You’ve just started him on his path to learned helplessness. Fast forward 15 years and there’s your slider.

Sometimes sliders spontaneously snap out of it. But usually they just burn up every bridge they have and, finally thrown back on their own resources, they’re forced to get to work. What a waste of everyone’s time! One of the beauties of play therapy is that it encourages children to be independent and to solve their own problems. It can help, but sometimes you end up with a slider anyway.